Well folks, that's officially a wrap. On Tuesday night, the series finale of This Is Us aired — and needless to say, there were no dry eyes by the end.
While the last episode of season 6 wasn't nearly as devastating as last week's "The Train," the series finale still packed plenty of emotional moments. Going along with the theme of embracing life's simplest moments, much of the episode switches back and forth between scenes from Rebecca (Mandy Moore)'s funeral to one particular flashback of the Big Three enjoying a rainy Saturday together with Rebecca and Jack (Milo Ventimiglia). By the end, many questions about the future were answered — Kevin (Justin Hartley) is off to do more charity work, Kate (Chrissy Metz) is set on opening more schools for the visually impaired and Randall (Sterling K. Brown) has his sights set on the White House.
These expressed goals were satisfying for viewers hoping for a happy ending. But even still, the final moments of the show had some people scratching their heads. The last shot of the series didn't include the Big Three all together. Instead, just seconds before the credits rolled, viewers are taken back to the Saturday-morning flashback, and Jack is watching his family play pin the tail on the donkey. A young Randall comes and sits on the couch and looks at his dad and smiles as Jack sits in the foreground.
Many seemed confused about the writers' choice to have this be the last shot of the entire show. But to one fan on Reddit, the decision seemed obvious. To them, the last shot perfectly alludes back to Jack telling Rebecca on the train that she would still be with the family even though she's gone as well as the powerful exchange between Randall and grown-up Deja (La Trice Harper) earlier on in the finale, where Deja tells her father she's pregnant and going to name her baby boy William after her grandfather. The fan's comment, which has received a lot of attention on Reddit, reads in full:
My interpretation of Randall being the final shot is because Jack was present in the exchange between Deja and Randall. He just got done telling Rebecca she would be there with them but not how she imagined, cut to big three sharing sweet moments with family members. Rebeccas spirit was “there” in those loving moments. So Jack was “there” in the look between Deja and Randall mirroring the look they shared together on the couch. I’m assuming they chose Randall because he is the only one going to be a grandfather at that moment in time and it was a special moment between the two of them.
In other words, we see Jack present through Randall in the moment where Randall and Deja are sharing the special news about William. This is illustrated when viewers see Randall sitting on a chair after the funeral and looking over at Deja with a knowing smile — just as Jack did on the couch that one rainy Saturday afternoon. On that particular day, Jack taught Randall how to savor the little moments, a life lesson that carried on with him even after his parents died.
Ugh, and now we're crying all over again. While we're sad the show has come to an end, all we can do is look to the wise words of William (Ron Cephas Jones) to bring us comfort: "If you step back and look at the whole picture, if you're brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you'll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca. It's just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing."
